❄️🌽: Cold this morning. And the bitey bugs are suddenly quiet. They’ll be back again this evening, in time for corn on the cob, but an intermission. Time to scratch the old bites.
⛵🐿️: Flying squirrels, each evening, clockwork at a quarter to nine. Swoop, land and scurry. From roofline down to the tippy maple. When the sky is still too bright for stargazing. Nautical twilight — time for squirrels to sail.
🐮🌊: One neighbour and then another and another tell me there is a moose nearby. I must watch for sign of this maybe moose!
🦇💡: Big brown bats dazzle and swoop over the yard. They’re well-rested after a day spent dreaming in the eaves. Fireflies fire the starting pistol. Each evening first the fireflies then bats then squirrels. They all know the schedule. But only a few embers of fireflies now. Their season is late. A few blinks in the black.
🐣🏡: Phoebe’s babies have long since fledged from their nest, but we still see Phoebe around the yard sometimes, and say hello.
🧛♂️🐁: Tiny ticks, waving in the grass, moving Lyme from there to here. Biting the disease out of mice and barfing it into our blood. A story of mice and men. Careful of the freckles that walk, the poppy seeds with legs.
☠️🧵: A mourning dove snatched away from under the feeder. A pile of soft down and a few feathers on the ground. Never noticed before these are polka dot doves. A hawk perhaps, that snipped this dove’s thread, but that day the hawk babies ate and their threads spun a little longer.
🥔🌟: Potato plants pulled, spuds sorted. Dirty treasure. Scrubbed and crisp roasted in rosemary.
I wake a deer on the hill. She raises her white flag and bounces away. This uneven slope her velodrome.
Dark clouds refusing to crack, rain refusing to fall. Careful now, with this water.
Fragrant trimmed tomato branches wheelbarrowed to the compost. Food for next year’s food.
Berries jammed and jammed in jars.
Pickles picked and pickled.
Around and around. A season to stretch out and make ourselves long as the days. The bright dark days of summer.
Happy Thursday folks ☀️
~Kate